family of deceased might not be enough for a lonely kid. Or for anyone. A tic in his cheek started up and quickly crawled across his face.
Ma, seated on the floor now with her knees drawn up, peered at him with misery and resentment. Dane wondered where the anger had come from, since she'd shown so little of it in life. Did the dead keep count of your mistakes? Did they catalog your sins? Indexed and cross-referenced, numbered in order of greatest transgressions. There, feel the heft of your faults and failures and crimes.
His mommy, what had he ever done to make her give him the eye like that?
The kid's muscles slowly loosened as he sank down to sit beside Ma. The thrum of Dane's pulse grew steadily more distant. The boy with the sick brain took a step forward. Ma opened her mouth to speak.
“Come on by, Daniel Ezekiel,” Dane said, and shut the cell phone.
Glory Bishop was working with the feds. She'd probably helped them to corner her own husband and throw the net over him.
He turned around and she was sitting there naked, holding a Beretta Jaguar.22 loosely in her hand. All these people and their teeny guns they could hide anywhere. She must've had the gun clipped under the couch or stuffed between the cushions.
“You really think you need that roscoe with me?” he asked.
It made her grin with a little warmth, but not much. “No.”
“You got something you want to tell me?”
“I'd like for you to put your.38 over on the table there.”
“I didn't bring it with me.”
For a second it looked like Glory might want to check his pile of clothes, forgetting that she'd taken them off him in the first place. “Was it really necessary to send him the whole show?”
“I didn't. You fell asleep for a while.”
“C'mon.”
“For a couple of minutes, Johnny. You've done it before, you just don't realize it. You talk in your sleep.”
And Cogan thought he might say something interesting. “So you're partnered with the feds. To do what exactly?”
“Deal with the Monticelli drugs filtering into Hollywood.”
Jesus, back to that. “To help your husband get off easy?”
“I don't give a damn about that bastard. He lied and he used me. I'm trying to keep myself out of trouble and keep hold of some assets.”
“How much trafficking money we talking about?”
“About two hundred grand a year.”
When you broke it down that was less than twenty g's a month and hardly seemed worth the effort on anybody's part. More cash was changing hands on the corner of South Third and Hughes during the week, a block and a half from the 90th Precinct.
More likely this was really about the gunrunning coming up from south of the border. One of the serious revolutionary countries where the poppy fields took up half the nation. Guns, drugs, feds, and rebellion. It was the fed part that had fouled the equation. If Cogan had been CIA, then a banana republic government takeover would've been the first thing Dane had thought of. Well, maybe.
Glory Bishop was much sharper in some ways than he'd given her credit for, and a lot more naive too. This next scene was going to be a pretty ugly one.
He sat and tried not to glare at her, but he couldn't help feeling a touch betrayed. Somehow he'd grown to care enough about her to form expectations. She wrapped the kimono around herself and Dane asked, “You mind if I get dressed?”
“No, of course not.”
Who would think that such a small thing as a.22 could ruin the mood? When events calmed down, he might have to ponder this one a little longer. But as it was, he'd barely zipped up his fly when Cogan walked in.
“Does that doorman give you dirty looks too?” Dane asked, continuing to dress.
“Naw, I'm on the lease.”
“You the one that put up that goddamn swing?”
Glory had said the apartment didn't come from drug money. Couldn't fault her for telling the truth, when she did. So the place wasn't really bugged. Not technically. But Glory was in contact with Cogan, both of them keeping their eyes on Dane. But for what purpose?
“So it's not about the drugs. Or the movies. It's the guns.”
“Yep,” Cogan told him, no longer grinning. His hair combed. Everything in the open now. Two buddies who finally had all the bullshit out of the way and could lay it on the table.
Glory Bishop said, “Guns? What guns?” Feisty, but with a little girl air about her. Cogan came over and plucked the Beretta out of her hand, more daddy than boss or lover. “What are you two talking about?”
Dane finished dressing and sat on the other end of the couch from where he and Glory had gotten their final groove on. “Only in relation to a revolution.”
“Tha's right.”
“Which country?”
“Some Central America shithole I have a hard time pronouncin'.”
Glory just kept standing there. “What the hell are you both talking about?” Not even all that flustered. She'd always known something else was going on, and like Dane, she'd just gone with the flow, hoping everything would be revealed in the end.
“Start a war or stop one?” Dane asked.
“Tell you the truth, son, I'm not sure. That's for the fellas well above me. I'm just doing my job.”
“I thought that sort of thing was the CIA's turf.”
“It mostly is, but I suspect the Bureau is expanding. Interagency cooperation and like that.”
“Oh holy shit,” Glory said, cinching the kimono tighter around her waist, looking on the floor for her panties now, talking rapidly. “You motherfucker, Cogan, you rotten motherfucker. Jesus, when my husband was on trial, the things you said. All those threats you made… so determined to ruin my life, you fucker. You said you'd-”
“I said a lot of things, darlin', every one of them true. I needed your help, and I did what I had to do to get it.”
“Motherfucker!”
“Why'd this guy take a fall in the first place?” Dane asked.
“He wasn't ambitious enough,” Cogan explained. “He got sloppy. He wanted out of the deal, but we needed him. His company, the way the cash was cleaned, the way the weapons came on up out of Southern California. His contacts, the distribution, everything. But he kept trying to shut it down and pull out.”
“He wanted to go clean and you wouldn't let him.”
Noting the judgmental tone but ignoring it, Cogan said, “I told him to just keep on playin' ball, but he had to buck me. What makes a man do that, thwart his own government? He was a damn fool, and a traitor to boot, if you want to put a point on it. I figured Glory would step up when he went down.”
“Rotten motherfucker!”
“So what do you want from me?” Dane asked.
“I want you to convince your friend Vincenzo Monticelli to help out his sister's career even more.”
It started snapping into place then. “You want a new front man. Vinny Monticelli to take over where this guy left off. Grease the production company's wheels, that it? Smuggle the drugs and guns, keep putting the clean money into the business, make a few movies, put Maria on the screen, overthrow some pissant country.”
“Tha's right.”
“Man, did you go the long way around the block. Vinny wants me dead. So what makes you think I'll have any pull with them about where the family money goes?”
“Let's just say I got a hunch he'll listen to you. Some folks been declarin' that he's crazy. If so, I figure you might be the only one to talk any sense to him.”
“Why?”
“You're kinda crazy too.” Cogan showed his big teeth, almost getting podunk again, but not quite. The real smile this time, shining through. “I had a feelin' about you right from the start. You haven't exactly been lying low,
